"Mastery" and the SN child

[Doran]

I hope this question doesn't sound ridiculous. Lately I've been wondering about expectations for the SN child. Of course it would differ depending on the level of learning disability. So, specifically, for our dd, we're talking about reading/processing delays that affect her reading ability, spelling, and also math. (I'm sorry I don't have a more specific diagnosis to share -- I know that could be helpful, but we have not taken that route due to the financial obligation of paying out of pocket for the testing.)

I've wondered whether I should expect 100% correct answers on a Saxon Math lesson, for example. How to you judge "mastery" in kids who are so prone to errors that are not necessarily the result of not understanding the material. For example, our dd (11) may miss 4-6 problems on a Saxon lesson. A couple of those might be due to the fact that she didn't really understand the concept. However, at least half the incorrect answers might be because she transposed a number. Maybe she was meant to divide 75 by 5 and instead, she wrote 77. Or the answer was $106.14 and she wrote $16.14. We can usually find the mistakes easily when we go back to look at how she solved the problem. In a "real" (ugh) environment, the problem would be marked incorrect. What does the hs parent do about that -- treat it the same way?

There are probably oodles of pages of information about this somewhere. just thought I'd bring it here first. What is "mastery" exactly? Is it everything correct, or is it more of an understanding of the concept.

Doran

[Claire]

My dd is 17yo now, but she used to make those types of errors frequently. Her accuracy (and reading skills) improved greatly with cognitive skills training.

My personal view is that a child should not be held back from progressing conceptually in math because of "output" type errors such as you are describing. What I would do is mark them wrong, and then have her go back and correct her mistakes (if she can find them). If she can't see what her mistake was, then I would help her with that.

If you are talking about marking answers wrong in order to "grade" the work, I wouldn't do that. However, I do think it is important for a student to get immediate feedback about mistakes in order to become aware of them. If a student isn't aware he has made the mistakes, he has no opportunity to learn from them.

Not sure I answered your question?

[Stirsmommy]

[QUOTE=Claire;50567]My dd is 17yo now, but she used to make those types of errors frequently. Her accuracy (and reading skills) improved greatly with cognitive skills training."

Claire,
What is cognitive skills training?
Melissa

[Kathy in MD]

I give my ds 50% for that part alone. With calculators so common, I can see even giving 75% for setting up and doing the steps properly. Then if my ds gets an A or B on a test (80% and up), I have him go on. I will look at the work and see if there was one type of problem that gave him fits, and I'll reteach that portion. If he received a C on a test, I'll consider going on based on the type of mistakes made. Sometimes I have him just retake the test. BTW, I use Chalk Dust, which is a mastery program.

I've instituted separate drill at a different time for the careless mistakes. The drill is at a lower level of math than he's currently learning. It's not part of math and lasts for 3 minutes per sheet. I give one or two sheets per day. My ds has reduced his mistakes since I've started this.

HTH

[LisaTheresa]

Hi Doran -

I don't think mastery means 100%. I definitely like it when my son gets every problem correct, but I don't think that's reasonable even for a child that isn't special needs. From what I understand, Saxon has a lot of problems in each lesson, so maybe 4 - 6 problems wrong isn't so bad, especially considering it sounds like she understands the concept. If you gave her a percentage score, what would she get?

My son (who is my special needs child) does R&S Math and he has days where he will get them all right, others where he will get 1 - 2 wrong and then others yet again where there are 4 - 6 or more. He almost always makes the "glitchy" types of mistakes you are talking about.

I do get frustrated to think that this child understands the concept but so often makes "output" errors, as Claire said. However, if I am realistic and I actually graded his paper, I bet he'd get a percentage score of at least a B on most of his work.

If I am totally off base or we are talking about 4 - 6 wrong out of 10 problems, then please forgive me. I just think sometimes as Moms, it is very hard to get perspective when our kids make mistakes. Especially, when they are special needs children.

Lisa

[Claire]

What is cognitive skills training?

There are different programs. We did PACE (http://www.processingskills.com) (Processing and Cognitive Enhancement). Another program from the same company is LearningRx. This company also used to have a home program called BrainSkills, but that is no longer available. It is hoped that a new home program called Cognitive Calisthenics will come on the market sometime this year. A more foundational program is Audiblox, but Audiblox lacks some of the components of the other programs.

If you think of development as a pyramid, sensory development is the foundational layer (motor skills, vision, hearing). Cognitive skills development is the middle layer (attention skills, pattern recognition, directionality, visual and auditory sequencing, visual and auditory short-term memory, working memory, visual processing skills, auditory processing skills, etc.). The very small peak of the pyramid is academic learning. Each layer builds on the layer beneath.

In my dd's case, multiple severe visual efficiency deficits that went undiagnosed for many years caused cognitive skills acquisition to lag. It's like building a pyramid with quite a few bricks left out of a layer underneath! We were able to remediate the visual *efficiency* deficits with vision therapy, but that therapy stopped short of developing the next layer of skills (visual *processing*).

Once foundational problems are corrected (sensory integration, visual efficiency, vestibular system delays due to auditory processing disorder), children often benefit from cognitive skills training. This brings that middle layer of development up to optimal levels for learning. Ease of academic learning depends greatly on cognitive skills development, which in turn depends greatly on sensory-level development.

My dd's major areas of deficit were visual efficiency skills and phonemic awareness skills. It was critical in her case that the visual efficiency deficits (a sensory-level problem) be remediated before we started cognitive skills training. Dd was about 10yo when we did PACE. Before starting PACE, she could read Berenstain Bears books *very* disfluently (it was hard to listen to her!!!). By the end of PACE, she was reading the first Harry Potter book out loud very fluently.

[Laurie4b]

Teaching to mastery means being able to get the concept correct. You choose a criteria. Personally I use 90% as the criteria before moving on AND I come back and review. Others use 80%. However, that does NOT count errors of other issues that are not math.

The way that I would handle the other types of errors is to have her redo the problem Transposing numbers or miscopying problems are NOT part of the mastery of the MATH. (And actually, in the public schools, I would expect the same accomodations to be made for a child with those problems, just as spelling is not counted off except in spelling for a child with dyslexia or dysgraphia.) Once she has redone the problem, I'd then count it in the total score. Saxon is a really hard program to work towards mastery in, though, because there are so few problems of each kind.

The issue of transposing, miscopying, etc. are separate issues and when you're ready, you can handle them. If she has vision difficulties or attention issues, then you would tailor the approach to what was causing the issues. Also, just using graph paper for the math might help. For now, as a starting place, I'd circle the problems where she has miscopied and give her several seconds to see if she can see her error. If she can, great. You're working on her self-monitoring skills. If she can't, point it out, and have her redo the math part.